A fashionable New York apartment house became the scene of a grim mystery in September 1924 when two people were found dead and a third was discovered unconscious inside the building at 140 West 55th Street.
At first, police had more questions than answers. Dr. George M. Partridge, a prominent physician, was found fully dressed on a couch in his ground-floor office. In another part of the building, Mrs. James J. Joughlin was found dead, while her husband, Dr. Joughlin, was still alive but overcome and unable to explain what had happened.
Then came a strange and troubling clue: a dead cat in the Joughlins’ bathroom.
That discovery strengthened the belief that the victims had been poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes, possibly drifting up from the apartment house basement. An outlet from the furnace room led into a court beneath the affected rooms, and investigators suspected the deadly gas had been blown into the apartments above.
Yet the case remained puzzling. The building contained 36 apartments, and no other residents appeared to have been affected. Why had the gas reached only these rooms? How long had it been seeping in? And could the unconscious Dr. Joughlin survive long enough to tell police what he knew?
The following account, published in 1924, tells of the strange deaths by gas that left New York police searching for answers.
Police Puzzle Over Deaths By Gas
NEW YORK. — Police were attempting to clear up the mystery of the deaths of two persons and the serious condition of another from gas in a fashionable apartment house at 140 West 55th Street, where Dr. George M. Partridge, prominent physician, and Mrs. James J. Joughlin, were found dead in their rooms and Dr. Joughlin was found unconscious.
Dr. Joughlin is in the city hospital in such a condition he cannot be questioned, but the discovery last night of a dead cat in the Joughlin bathroom strengthens the theory that Dr. Partridge and Mrs. Joughlin died and Dr. Joughlin was overcome by carbon monoxide from the basement of the apartment building.
Dr. Partridge’s body, fully dressed was found on a couch in his offices on the ground floor by Dr. Charles Norris, chief medical examiner and police while they were investigating the death of Mrs. Joughlin, whose body, with that of her unconscious husband, had been found a few hours before.
An outlet from the furnace in the basement leads into the court and it is believed tat the victims met their deaths from fumes blown into their rooms which are directly above the furnace room. No other residents in the 36 apartment building were affected.
Source: The Washington Times. Washington, D.C. September 15, 1924.
